To Sous Vide or Not to Sous Vide?
That indeed is the question!
Is it a fad? A one trick pony? Or just another device with a huge learning curve? My answer to all three of these questions is a resounding NO! Here’s why I went down the "sous vide" path many years ago and fell in love with it.
Let me start by saying that I HATE goat meat. My husband, on the other hand, wants to eat every last goat on the planet because he hates goats - they eat everything, including the second love of his life, trees. What’s this got to do with sous vide? Well, everything, as it turns out.
In January of 2008 we retired from work in sub-arctic Edmonton, Alberta, bought a catamaran in Florida and set out to become cruisers; people who live aboard their boats and float happily around the oceans of the world - or in our case, the Caribbean. The RSVP had a decent sized fridge, but a baby-shoes-sized freezer which really didn’t keep anything frozen for longer than a day. As we hit the incredible outer islands of the Bahamas and went in search of groceries, we were directed to the ‘pink house’ or the ‘green house’ where a very makeshift garage would be pressed into service as a grocery store. The shelves contained long outdated canned goods and suspect sundries with no expiry dates. A rusty household chest freezer rattled ominously at the back of the shop holding plastic bags of frost-coated lumps - could be chicken, might be goat. Many times the suprise package would be so freezer burned and indistinguishable that we resorted to chips and salsa for dinner. Are you starting to understand where I’m going here?.
By cruising season number two I was much better prepared to do battle with the whole provisioning thing. At home base in Port St Lucie we purchased a large AC/DC freezer which gave me the ability to store food for months. But there was a new device on the market (’m a glutton for new kitchen gadgets), called a "sous vide". Now I could vacuum seal, cook, and freeze meat, and then with a simple flash sear or a sauce, I had dinner in a heartbeat that didn’t require heating up the galley. This is a real consideration when you’re parked in the tropics! 50 pounds of chicken, beef and pork later, and I no longer had to worry about eating goat!
After six years of waiting for boat parts in exotic places, we sold the vessel and went in search of land locked adventures instead. I’ve used my sous vide regularly since then and still experiment to find out what it can do well, and what it can’t do. It isn’t great for cooks who can’t plan ahead, or for those who don’t have much in the way of spare time. But it is spectacular for turning tough pieces of meat into tender, juicy offerings that rival the most expensive cuts. If you like to serve a perfectly cooked steak that you don’t have to fuss over and watch constantly, sous vide is a fabulous tool. Or if you like to make breakfast ahead of time so it's ready in 30 seconds on weekday mornings, sous vide is the way to go!
This tool has given me an otherwise undeserved reputation as a good cook. And while the myriad of blogging sites devoted to "sous videing" abound with exotic experiments like boar, alligator, kangaroo, etc. I can happily skip over these as well as any recipe with goat in it!
